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How my first trip to Israel led to “The First Ever Yiddish Show in Egypt”
As one who has been eager to build a career in music and comedy online, I began to notice that about 25% of my views were coming from Israel. Messages started pouring in.
Friends who lived there told me people were talking about me. Promoters reached out about shows.
“When are you coming to Israel?”
But a severe fear of flying — and an anti-Zionist Satmar upbringing that included the burning of Israeli flags on Purim — grounded me. Then I booked a gig in Poland, a big step. If my career was going to grow, I couldn’t avoid overseas flights forever.
A few days later, Rabbi Dov Oliver called. The rabbi of Hillel of Rockland County, New York has been trying for years to persuade me to visit the Jewish State.
“Come on my Israel trip,” he said.
“If I can take one night off to do a show, I’m in,” I replied.
“Of course.”
And just like that, my first trip to Israel was happening.
We announced the show and tickets started selling immediately. Within days, dozens were gone and then it sold out. People were begging me for tickets.
The flight, however, was a nightmare. My seat was cramped, near the bathrooms, with barely any legroom and no window. Panic hit instantly. Every cell in my body screamed to run off the plane.
The anxiety came in waves for 11 hours. I cried, paced the aisles, talked with friends and flight attendants, and breathed through it.
Finally we landed. When the plane touched down in Israel, people started singing: “Hashem yitbarach tamid ohev oti” (“God Almighty always loves me”).
I cried again — this time from relief.
At the airport, a soldier greeted me and said she loved my videos. I kissed the ground outside, like the tzadikim, the holy righteous people, were said to do.
Israel immediately felt intense — beautiful mountains, Hebrew letters everywhere, ancient streets. In the cities of Tzfas and Miron, the birthplace of the kabbalah, I felt comfortable among Hasidim, amid the mystical nature of the place.
Other parts felt foreign: army bases, modern Israeli culture, the constant awareness of war.
We volunteered a lot — packing food, planting flowers. Painting a bomb shelter in a school was sobering.
But the moments that touched me most were simple ones: singing to elderly Yiddish speakers in a hospital, dancing with soldiers, and performing Shabbos songs in the shuk where crowds gathered around.
Then I went to the Kotel.
The moment I touched the Wall I burst into tears. I prayed for my family, for peace, and for inner calm.
Standing there, I realized something: Somehow, despite everything, I belonged here.
My show was scheduled for a few days later. But early that Shabbos morning, we woke to sirens.
War had escalated. We were rushed into bomb shelters. Birthright decided to evacuate us from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea.
My show was canceled.
I was devastated, but also strangely calm. War doesn’t care about your plans.
Soon we were evacuated again — this time out of the country through Egypt. At the hotel in Taba, surrounded by Birthright groups from all over the world, I had an idea. Why not do the show here?
The rabbi loved it. A flyer went out: “The First Ever Yiddish Show in Egypt.”
The setup was far from glamorous. No sound system, terrible acoustics, and we were competing with a belly dancer performance down the hall.
But I had my guitar. I sang with everything I had. People clapped, joined in, and some even played along on makeshift instruments.
It wasn’t the show I imagined. But somehow it was perfect.
From Egypt we flew to Greece, where we spent Purim together with Jews from around the world. In a random hotel in Athens we read the Megillah, booed Haman, and danced in the lobby until security shut us down.
Finally, after flights through Switzerland, we made it back to Newark.
The trip didn’t turn me into a political expert or a passionate Zionist. But something deeper happened. I fell in love with the place.
Israel feels messy, intense, spiritual, chaotic. And somehow, despite everything, like home.
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UK adopts sweeping measures against antisemitism in schools
(JTA) — The U.K. has adopted sweeping measures to combat antisemitism in English schools, prompting pushback from the country’s largest teachers’ union.
The move came after a new government-commissioned review found that three in five Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism in English schools. The most common incidents were jokes, stereotypes and comments about Jewish people. About half of respondents who witnessed or experienced antisemitism said the incidents were not reported, most often because they did not think they would be taken seriously.
The government on Wednesday accepted 27 recommendations from the report, including dedicated antisemitism training for leaders and staff, improved recording of antisemitic incidents and moves to build a better understanding of Jewish life, identity and contemporary antisemitism.
The government commissioned the report following a spate of high-profile attacks on Jews in Britain, including an attack on a synagogue in Manchester last year that left two men dead.
The report’s author, Sir David Bell, the vice chancellor of the University of Sunderland and former chief inspector of schools in England, recommended addressing antisemitism distinctly from other forms of racism. He argued that antisemitism was a “uniquely complex” problem because of intertwined racial and religious dimensions, since Jewish identity can encompass both an ethnicity and a religion, along with expressions of prejudice that hold all Jews responsible for the actions of Israel.
The government will also encourage English schools to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The definition is supported by many mainstream Jewish organizations and has been adopted by 47 countries, including the U.K., but critics say that it conflates some forms of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.
British Education Secretary Lucy Powell called Bell’s review a “generational moment” and said that “implementation is now my priority.”
However, the National Education Union, the largest union representing teachers, lecturers, teaching assistants and support staff in the United Kingdom and Europe, raised concerns on Wednesday about recommending the IHRA definition for schools. NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said in a statement that the definition “risks deepening the problem rather than tackling it, and actively undermining efforts to confront antisemitism.”
“The IHRA’s contested framing risks blurring the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and the genocide in Gaza, leaving teachers with uncertainty when they need clarity,” said Kebede. He cited a risk that “children who cannot critically explore issues through classroom discussion will instead seek their answers in online and unsafe groups.”
Kebede also encouraged Britain’s Department for Education to strengthen guidance on all forms of racism, not only antisemitism, saying that 65% of teachers report they have not received any antiracism training in the past year.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, an umbrella organization for British Jewish communities, celebrated the antisemitism report and the government’s adoption of its proposed measures. The group specifically praised the report’s “clear recommendations that schools and local authorities follow government guidelines by adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as a tool to deepen understanding of contemporary antisemitism.”
“We remain concerned about undue external influence on schools driven by narrow political agendas, and tendentious materials seeping into schools and increasing disharmony, and we will continue to press for vigilance against this,” said the Board of Deputies.
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Orthodox Jewish man stabbed in midtown Manhattan
(New York Jewish Week) — An Orthodox Jewish man is in stable condition after being stabbed on Wednesday evening in the Diamond District of midtown Manhattan. Police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime.
Police told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident as a possible antisemitic attack, and Manhattan Shomrim — the Jewish community watch group — has asked people to share footage as police search for the suspect. No arrests have been made.
The victim was identified by police as a 26-year-old man, and Orthodox Jewish outlet COLLive identified him as a resident of Crown Heights, the neighborhood that is home to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement’s headquarters.
He was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition. Police said they were called at about 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday after the man was stabbed in the back with “an unknown sharp object” on 47th Street near Fifth Avenue. ABC7 reported that the victim told investigators he believed he was stabbed with a needle or syringe.
According to the Chabad website, which published an interview with the victim, he is a recently ordained Hasidic rabbi named Joseph, who commutes to Midtown each day to wrap tefillin with Jewish merchants. The attacker, Joseph told the website, was a woman who seemed to be following him prior to the stabbing.
The attack comes as Jewish New Yorkers have been targeted in more than half of the hate crimes committed in New York City this year, despite making up about 12% of the city’s population.
In July, an assailant stabbed two men on the Upper West Side, including one who was leaving a synagogue, while yelling “Allahu akbar,” and was charged with committing hate crimes.
Louis Keene contributed reporting.
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VIDEO: A Hasid gives us a tour of Morocco in Yiddish
דער ירושלימער יוטוב־שטערן וועלוול קירשנבוים האָט לעצטנס אַרויסגעשטעלט אַ ווידעאָ אויף ייִדיש פֿון אַ פּרעכטיקן וויזיט, וואָס ער האָט געמאַכט אין מאַראָקאָ. עס באַגלייט אים זײַן חבֿר אַבֿרהם פּרץ.
אינעם ווידעאָ זעט מען ווי קירשנבוים דאַוונט שחרית מיט די אָרטיקע ייִדן און באַזוכט אַ גוט אָפּגעהיטענעם בית־עולם, וווּ עס ליגן באַערדיקט גרויסע צדיקים ווי למשל הרבֿ חיים בן עתר (1696–1743), באַקאַנט ווי דער „אור החיים“. „מענטשן מיינען, אַז נאָר אין אייראָפּע זענען דאָ קבֿרים פֿון צדיקים!“ זאָגט קירשנבוים.
מיר זעען אַ גרויסע, שיינע שיל מיט אַ פֿײַנער אַרכיטעקטור אין קאַזאַבלאַנקאַ; דעם גרויסן אַראַבישן שוק, וווּ קירשנבוים קויפֿט זיך אײַן מלבושים פּונקט ווי די מאַראָקאַנער גייען אָנגעטאָן. ער באַוווּנדערט אויך די שיינע טיי־גלעזער און טשײַניקן, וואָס מע פֿאַרקויפֿט דאָרט, און באַקענט זיך מיט אַ ייִדישן סוחר וואָס האַנדלט מיט זילבער און גאָלד, פּונקט אַזוי ווי זײַן טאַטע און זיידע האָבן געטאָן פֿאַר דור־דורות.
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